Seventeen years after the United Nations (UN) recognized conflict-related sexual violence as a threat to international peace and security, Pakistan has called for the “full, faithful and non-selective” implementation of the Security Council resolutions, including on women, peace and security, that were aimed at fighting this crime.
Speaking in the 15-member Council, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, said, “these resolutions carry clear obligations to prevent, protect, investigate, prosecute and repair” in a bid to end sexual violence in conflicts. That would be the “true test” of the Security Council’s commitment to the cause, he said in a debate convened by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Council President for July, in which more than 70 delegations participated. They considered the Secretary-General’s recent report on conflict-related sexual violence, presented by Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on SUN, Pakistanexual Violence in Conflict.
Covering 21 situations of concern, the report documented 9,788 cases verified by the United Nations in 2025, more than double the number recorded in 2024. “Yet such figures can never capture the full scale and magnitude of this chronically underreported crime,” Ms. Patten, the Special Representative, said, adding that for every case reaching a clinic, 10 to 20 were estimated to go unreported and unaddressed.
The mandate was established by Council resolution 1888 (2009), building on the Council’s recognition of conflict-related sexual violence as an issue of international peace and security, including its use as a weapon and tactic of war and the persistent impunity enjoyed by perpetrators.
In his remarks, Ambassador Asim Ahmad, the Pakistani envoy, said that conflict-related sexual violence destroyed individuals, fractures families, terrorized communities and left inter-generational wounds, including for children born of conflict-related rape. At the same time, he stressed that the Secretary-General’s ‘listing mechanism’, the blacklist of perpetrators, should cover all situations of conflict and foreign occupation on the Council’s agenda.